


city in the rear view and nothing in the distance

by prizefights



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Study, Irregular Time Skips, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 05:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5152667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prizefights/pseuds/prizefights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>when adam gets into columbia, something bright and warm swells in gansey’s chest. it makes itself comfortable lodged squarely in his ribcage and swallows all the words gansey wishes he could say.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>or: a study of gansey's relationship with adam and college and a six month time frame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	city in the rear view and nothing in the distance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [not_my_century](https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_my_century/gifts).



> title taken from walk the moon's "next in line".

when adam gets into columbia, something bright and warm swells in gansey’s chest. it makes itself comfortable lodged squarely in his ribcage and swallows all the words gansey wishes he could say.

 

 

later at monmouth, while blue and ronan and noah are off doing who knows what, and it’s just adam and gansey sitting with their backs against the window, the last light of day filters in through multi-colored panels and frames adam like an impressionist painting.

adam starts, a half whisper, “i’m nervous.”

gansey says, “you’re not the one who’s undecided.”

“ha,” adam responds.

and they fall into a silence that a few months ago would’ve been uncomfortable, but they’ve both changed so much. in gansey’s memory, this moment stands out as the benchmark for the end of their last summer together, something about the light nostalgically encasing it in amber.

 

 

 

 

 

adam goes to columbia. gansey goes to princeton. in miles, they’re not too far apart, but the distance feels like it spans galaxies.

 

 

 

 

 

gansey slips all too easily into his well-worn richard campbell gansey iii facade: effortlessly charming and good at small talk and effusing old money.

quickly, he falls into a routine of sorts. he goes to class and he talks to classmates (and he makes friends because it’s easy for gansey to be friendly, but they’re not  _friends,_  not best friends, not adam) and he goes back to his apartment and does homework and he talks to ronan and blue and sometimes noah and he thinks about talking to adam. mostly, he thinks about talking to adam. they’re both busy, and it’s not like they can at least see each other every day like they did in high school.

 

 

 

 

to: aparrish@columbia.edu

from: rgansey@princeton.edu

i think i’m going to major in archaeology. maybe i can get into indiana jones’s class.

 

 

 

 

 

gansey gets caught on adam. adam, his best friend, his brilliant best friend.. more often than not, he finds himself wondering what adam is doing, wishing they were both still in henrietta and gansey could get in the pig and drive over to st. agnes like he used to.

and he could, if he wanted to; new york really wasn’t that far away.

but he doesn’t. instead, he calls blue.

“hey.” blue keeps her voice hushed at first, out of habit.

gansey matches her volume. “blue,” he says. “tell me something.”

they both have to remind themselves that this isn’t the same thing as their late-night calls, gansey in the bathroom at monmouth, blue whispering so as not to wake up anyone in the house. they both have to remind themselves that things are different now; they’re different now.

blue hums a little, thinking, and then: “orla won’t stop playing the goddamn cell block tango. that’s all i’ve been hearing for the past week and a half.”

“i guess i shouldn’t say she’s got the legs for it.”

“no, you shouldn’t,” blue says. “but  _i_  can, and she’s got the legs for it.”

 

 

 

 

 

to: rgansey@princeton.edu

from: aparrish@columbia.edu

you’re already indiana jones, gansey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“you should come,” gansey says to adam over the phone once, “to princeton, i mean. you’d like it here. or maybe i could come to new york for a weekend, if you want.”

on the other side, adam sighs. he says, “i don’t know, gansey. listen, i should get to work now.”

and gansey says, “oh. okay.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

ronan plays the murder squash song all the way down from dc to henrietta, and gansey can’t even find it in himself to complain once. christmas with his family was the same, but it was gansey who had changed– there was a part of himself that he couldn’t quite let out at college, a part of him that he could only keep to himself. well, to himself and to ronan and to blue and noah and adam. but this: the feeling of coming home, letting himself just be, remebering what it was like before when all five of them were together and the world had all its possibilities bared open to them– this feels right.

he spends the week catching up with noah and ronan, recreating old henrietta memories of gelato and driving down empty stretches of road in the pig.

 

 

 

the first time gansey sees adam again in person is at the 300 fox way new year’s eve party. blue invites them all to stay the night, and adam arrives a couple of hours after gansey, ronan and noah do. all five of them spend the night getting buzzed on maura’s wine and each other’s company and the stories blue and ronan have to tell about what henrietta is like without them.

 

 

later, gansey catches a moment alone with adam on the back porch. with the moonlight casting adam’s face in angular shadows, he looks almost unrecognizable. gansey thinks back to the adam he first met what seems like an eternity ago, thinks back to the adam from that last moment of summer. and then he looks at adam’s face now, bright even in the cold gray of an early january morning.

adam says, “i keep thinking about last year, and how everything’s so different now?”

“good or bad different?”

adam shrugs. “neither. just different.”

“i feel like i don’t even know what i’m doing,” gansey says.

“that makes two of us.”

and they sit there with their hands next to each other, fingertips touching just so.

 

 

 

 

in hindsight, gansey can’t tell who had started it.

he and adam get on the interstate together on new year’s day, and adam drives him back to princeton. they spend the few hours there in silence while gansey’s brain plays a rerun of last night’s conversation.

neither of them say anything when adam parks his car outisde of gansey’s apartment building. they both sit for a moment, and adam looks at gansey, his eyes asking a question.

gansey says, “you can stay–” a pause– “if you want.”

time slows down. adam hesitates.

in his distorted memory, gansey sees adam lean in. and then for just a moment, gansey’s chest feels tight and his bones shake, and then he lurches forward, clumsy and lost in all his want.

their mouths meet.

 

 

the seconds spill like honey as the two of them go from the parking lot to the elevator to gansey’s futon, a tangle of lips and limbs.

centuries later, adam pulls away. he says, “i should go.”

the sudden absense of adam’s mouth on gansey’s and his hands in his hair is shocking. gansey feels a little bite of shame for wanting more than what he got.

a full minute of silence passes as gansey watches adam and adam watches gansey, both of them trying to parse each other’s reactions, trying to decide what their next moves should be, where they should go from here. where can they go from here? anything gansey might have said got caught in the lump in his throat. a full minute of silence passes and adam repeats himself. “i should go.”

they can both tell he doesn’t mean it, but he still makes a move to leave. he says, “yeah, i should head out before traffic gets bad.”

gansey nods. “of course,” he says unconvincingly. “yeah, you should go.”

“we’ll talk later, okay?” adam says.

gansey nods again.

adam picks up his jacket, and they glance at each other one last time.

and then adam leaves.


End file.
